Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel

Greg KH
2005-12-06T18:03:21Z

On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 03:48:06PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Greg KH:
>
> > On Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 03:29:54PM +0100, Jesper Juhl wrote:
> >>
> >> Why can't this be done by distributors/vendors?
> >
> > It already is done by these people, look at the "enterprise" Linux
> > distributions and their 5 years of maintance (or whatever the number
> > is.)
> >
> > If people/customers want stability, they already have this option.
>
> It seems that vendor kernels lack most DoS-related fixes. I'm only
> aware of a single vendor which tracks them to the point that CVE names
> are assigned.

If those DoS-related problems are only related to local user DoS's, yes,
that is understandable. If you have questions about this, ask the
vendor, they usually have a good reason for not including those fixes.

> Vendor kernels are not a panacea, either. With some of the basic
> support contracts (in the four-figure range per year and CPU), the
> vendor won't look extensively at random kernel crashes which could (in
> theory) be attributed to faulty hardware, *and* you don't get
> community support for these heavily patched kernel collages.

Yes, the lack of community support is one thing you do give up with
them.

thanks,

greg k-h